Shooting in low light

I have gotten pretty decent at shooting outdoors using natural light.  I shoot almost exclusively in manual mode and feel like I have definitely gotten the hang of it.  Indoors, however?  Not so much.  I have to sacrifice shutter speed to get the light I need, and as the mother of a 1 and 3 year old, that doesn't work so well.  I have tried aperture priority and shutter priority without success.  Shutter priority consistently tells me the subject is too dark.  Today, Charlotte was up from her nap before Luke, so I took advantage of her playing quietly alone to fool around with the camera (using her as my subject, of course!).  I suddenly remembered something I had read recently about exposure compensation.  I boosted it a little to the positive, used the coffee table as a tripod (to compensate for the low shutter speed necessary), and started shooting.  I even got a few elusive smiles!

Both of the pictures below were taken with my Nikon 55-200 f/4 lens.

1/15 sec

f/4

ISO 1600

+0.7 exposure compensation

And then big brother woke up, and after a snack of teddy grahams wanted to play with his computer again, so I snapped a picture of him, too!

1/25 second

f/4

ISO 1600

+0.7 exposure compensation

I got lucky today - there was a good amount of light coming through the window, and (more importantly), my children stayed relatively still while I was taking pictures.  This is rare!  While I was able to make these settings work today, I typically need at least a 1/125 shutter speed to stop their motion.

I'll keep practicing.  At least I know it CAN be done!